BOSTON— On Dec. 7, 2001 Jeff Van Gundy walked away. He left the Knicks practice at Purchase College and just walked. By the time he’d completed his trek he’d made a decision, that he wasn’t coming back.

He was a successful coach since he was plucked to replace Don Nelson in the final months of the 1995-96 season, making the playoffs all six seasons and coming off a victory when he’d had enough. He walked away and it would never be as good at Madison Square Garden as it was back then.

Is it coincidence that his walk came shortly after James Dolan took full charge of the franchise and Dave Checketts, who had overseen a success on and off the court tenure had enough and departed?

Van Gundy pointed to family time back then and his sleep-deprived voice wearing on his players, but there were other things. A hoped-for contract extension was not tendered. His top assistant, Tom Thibodeau, wasn’t allowed to interview elsewhere.

Van Gundy and Checketts hadn’t won a championship with the Knicks, but they were a proud franchise, a ferociously competitive squad that any player would want to play for and a place where any coach would want to man the sidelines.

Jeff Van Gundy(Photo: Matthew Stockman, Getty Images)

Since then, not so much. There have been nine coaches if you include the interims put in place for the ones who couldn’t even finish out a season. Jeff Hornacek was the latest victim, spending two seasons at the helm that, now that his fight to stay for the final year of his contract is done, he will try to erase from his memory.

He joins a long list of names before him: Larry Brown, Lenny Wilkens, Isiah Thomas, Mike Woodson, Mike D’Antoni, Herb Williams, Kurt Rambis, Don Chaney and Derek Fisher. Some had been wildly successful before and some have been the same since. Some never got another job elsewhere. But what they all had in common, they couldn’t survive the Garden. Van Gundy’s walk marks the last time a coach left on his own accord.

Think of what could have been. D’Antoni is leading the Houston Rockets into the playoffs this week with the best record in basketball, regarded as an offensive savant. Thibodeau pushed the Minnesota Timberwolves into the final playoff berth in the Western Conference, their first playoff appearance in more than a decade with a gravel-voiced intensity. Woodson was fired after a 109-79 record.

So while we wonder just how the next coach will end up different it’s worth remembering what is the same. Dolan is still running the show, even if he spends more time as a blues singer — which he might be worse at than he is at running a basketball team. Steve Mills, the Knicks’ president, has been a constant throughout the decades.

FILE - In this March 18, 2014, file photo, New York Knicks new team president Phil Jackson puts his hand on team owner James Dolan, seated, during a news conference where Jackson was introduced, at New York's Madison Square Garden. The Knicks and Jackson parted ways Wednesday morning, June 28, 2017, ending a three-year tenure that saw plenty of tumult and not a single playoff appearance.(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)(Photo: Richard Drew/AP)

The Knicks current leadership of Mills and general manager Scott Perry were at least kind enough to take Hornacek out of his misery as soon as the team landed back in New York after the season finale in Cleveland on Wednesday. He was never really given a shot, hired by Jackson and forced to tend to Jackson’s ill-fated insistence on proving the triangle offense, not Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, put the championship rings on his fingers. Buckling in as a puppet for Jackson he lost the respect of the players, his developmental coach favored by many of the young players was fired and he was handed a cast of numbers-focused players who are seen as losing players around the league.

“There was this plan we talked to Mr. Dolan on and how it could be a few-year process and what we needed to try to grow,” Hornacek said before the final game. “We’ve been trying to do that.”

So how do the Knicks get this one right?

Coach Jeff Hornacek said his players haven't been making enough "game-winning plays." He recently asked his players if they loved to win or hated to lose.(Photo: Frank Franklin II/AP Photo)

To begin, stop searching for a name. Phil Jackson’s arrival as team president was a mistake from the day he was introduced — skeptics pointing out that the Hall of Fame coach was ill-suited for an executive role for countless reasons, points that were reiterated right until the final ugly days when officials around the league still said they didn’t have a phone number to reach him. Jackson’s one move he couldn’t make — and there is certainly evidence that Dolan’s fingerprints were on the failure — was to hire Steve Kerr. Maybe everything would have been different if he could have given him the money that it took — the same money he got in Golden State and the same money that was handed to Derek Fisher instead.

The lists of candidates have already surfaced and consider a few things. First, how desperate does a coach have to be to step into this snake pit? A call around to the list of those who preceded them will not exactly bring a glowing review of the job conditions other than, “You get paid for years after you leave as long as you adhere to the non-disclosure agreement.”

And what will the first year be like? Kristaps Porzingis will be sidelined for months at best, the entire season at worst. Or maybe worst is imagining that he won’t be the unicorn everyone has been awaiting after knee surgery. The next best player is... well, that’s a good question. Frank Ntilikina has shown promise as a 19-year-old rookie. There will be a lottery pick this summer and probably another next summer if you make it through the season.

Somewhere there is a coach who can do the most important thing— develop Porzingis and Ntilikina and the lottery picks to come. But do the Knicks have the patience to think development, to wait out the process the way the Sixers did with Brett Brown? Across the river in Brooklyn, former Knicks’ assistant Kenny Atkinson is being tasked with developing a squad of late picks and failed lottery picks. The Knicks need to know -— and the prospective coach needs to know — this is where the Knicks are.

Is there a great teacher working as an assistant now or helming a college program? Is there someone who will keep the players working hard and growing, moving forward, when the team seems mired in the mud for the next year? Would the Knicks take a chance like Boston did on Brad Stevens? Will they give the next coach the freedom — and the players — to fit his plan?

Jerry Stackhouse, a fearless player and part of the Toronto Raptors well-schooled system, could be interesting. David Fizdale comes from the Pat Riley pedigree. Van Gundy has expressed interest in coming back. Would the management cede power to let him do the job he once did? Will they do it for anyone?

Hard times have populated the Garden for nearly 20 years. And hard times are still ahead for the Knicks. A coach who will tirelessly — and optimistically — work his way through that is the only path out of it. Who wants that job?